


By The Lies Handed Down

by lightningwaltz



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Angst, Gen, Missing Scene, introspections
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-10
Updated: 2012-06-10
Packaged: 2017-11-07 10:13:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/429878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightningwaltz/pseuds/lightningwaltz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Asami follows, because she’s never been one to prioritize miserable inertia over the uncertain future.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	By The Lies Handed Down

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a ficbending prompt, where Hiroshi offers to help break Asami out of jail, but Asami continues to reject his methods as far too extreme.

Turns out that it’s disquieting, being in jail. Not that Asami has ever expected otherwise.

She contemplates her prison of metal walls, and wonders whether they are comprised of titanium. By necessity, they must be impervious to all types of bending; even the specialized skills. Part of her wants to go dig Amon out of whatever lair he’s hiding in and scream ‘see, at least they treat criminal benders and non-benders exactly the same.’

Her mind wanders to the idea that her father might have gotten the idea for his metalbending-proof machines from this place. Asami resists the urge to retch. She slams her fists against the walls once, twice, calling out Mako’s name. Perhaps they’ve been housed next to one another, and already she feels loneliness creeping in. But her efforts are in vain; either way, it seems Mako can’t hear her, and she realizes she never expected to reach him.

The hours crawl by. It’s agony for anyone accustomed to racing satomobiles through the streets. The dead, dull air in her cell stands in pitiful contrast to the elation of outpacing even the wind. 

(Sometimes, when Korra alludes to difficulty with meditation, Asami wants to advise her that action can bring peace just as easily as stillness. Except now she thinks, hey, maybe she hasn’t escaped anything at all. Not a damn thing.)

When the door slams open, she’s momentarily blinded by the light, deafened by the sudden noise. An unknown police officer stares at her, and Asami rises to her feet in one poised motion.  
“Yes?” she asks, curt. “What is it?”

“I need you to come with me,” he says. Asami follows, because she’s never been one to prioritize miserable inertia over the uncertain future. 

Something has to happen. Something has to change. She scours through a number of possibilities: release, a trial, maybe even torture (though officially that’s not permitted. Officially.)  
Instead, she’s escorted into a non-descript room, and comes face-to-face with her father. 

It’s as though Asami’s lungs collapse in on themselves. Hiroshi Sato looks older already, gaunt and troubled, but she thinks she sees the hint of tears in his eyes. But at least now she’ll have more recent memories of him; memories that don’t end in his face light up by artificial electric blue. And she can stop running from the question of whether she killed her father.  
_You have one minute_ , she tells herself. _One minute to let yourself be a child._

“Are you alright?” she asks. _Have you forgiven me?_ , she thinks.

He nods. “How are you? Prison can’t be easy. If anyone’s mistreated you-“

“No, no, they’ve just left me alone for the most part.” Her throat burns, like she might cough or sob, and her father pulls her into a brief hug. This can only end one way, and it would be easier if Asami’s father hated her for the betrayal. “How did you even get in here?” she asks, after she takes a step back. Physically and mentally.

Hiroshi rolls his eyes. “Turns out that money is still more than adequate when it comes to… convincing people. Especially in this economy.” 

Oh, yes. She has seen that in the financial section of the newspaper; poverty is on the rise, the markets are in trouble. Probably resulting from the political turmoil. Funnily enough, citizens are reluctant to make investments when they’re too busy worrying over attacks by the equalists. Unpredictability was anathema to ball kinds of businesses. 

_Had Amon expected that? Was it a ploy to make the non-bending elements of society even angrier with the city’s leadership? After all, most places hire benders over non-benders, given the choice between the two…_

In happier times, Asami and her father might have discussed this over dinner. 

But, for now, her minute is up. 

“Why are you here, dad?” 

Her father stares at her, as though she suddenly started babbling nonsense. “I’m breaking you out of jail. I thought that was obvious.” 

Asami swallows, and she can see her father brace for impact. “No, I guessed that much. But why did you think I’d agree to leave with you?” 

Her father’s eyes close and he rubs his forehead. Hiroshi Sato has always been plagued by headaches. Asami recalls long-buried memories of drinking tea, feeling terribly grown-up (at the grand old age of six), and hearing mother reminding father to take his migraine medicine.

“Because you’re my daughter.” 

She waits. 

“And now you’ve seen what the benders’ loyalties are worth.” When her father’s eyes open, his gaze is clear. There’s no trace of anger or fanaticism to be found, and his calm demeanor makes every word sting all the more. “They valued you well-enough when you were rescuing the Avatar. But as soon as you set one toe out of line?” His lips thin and he shakes his head. “See where that’s led you?”

He’s not wrong, precisely. When she thinks back on her missteps during self-defense training, all the times her carelessness led to an accidental punch to the gut, she remembers the sickening feeling of surprise, more than she remembers any sort of physical pain. 

Being hauled away to jail was a similar type of shock. 

“I _can’t_ go with you, dad.” She rubs her eye on the corner of her sleeve. “I love you, and I’m sorry for deserting you, but I don’t respect what the equalists are doing.” 

Hiroshi draws the implicit correlation. _And right now I can’t respect your methods either._ “Are you doing this out of misguided loyalty to that boy?” 

“Whatever. No.” Asami’s mouth twitches at this inadvertent channeling of her teenage self- she had spent a year or two mired in sullen rebelliousness- and evidently her father thinks the same. Somehow they find themselves laughing in spite of (or maybe because of) the gravity of their situation. And then, just as abruptly, they fall silent. Only the diminishing echoes of their laughter prove it happened.

“Asami,” her father says, “blind loyalty won't do you any favors. You hardly know him.” 

_Oh, dad, I’m well-aware of that._ She thinks on Ikki’s errant question, and Korra’s wide-eyed nervousness. Asami is growing to care for the Fire Ferrets, more than words can say, but she wonders if she loves the truth more. Better the bitter reality than this growing tangle of suspicions.

Right?

“Also, he’s your first boyfriend.” Hiroshi is all but pleading with her, though no one would recognize the fact but Asami. “Almost no one ends up with their first love.” 

_I think you did._ As a little child, Asami’s parents had been full of silly stories of their courtship. Her mother had been poor, her father had been poorer, but together they had been an unstoppable team (even from the beginning, in their shabby first apartment.) Her father had Future Industries, of course, but Asami’s mother had taken on the world of fashion. And, through her mother, Asami had learned about elegance combined with competence, beauty combined with wit. 

“Dad.” Asami draws herself up to her full height, and looks her father right in the eye. “You and the equalists blew up the arena. You did it even though people could have been killed.” 

“Yes.” His voice has dropped to a whisper, but her father owns up to it. “We figured the benefits outweighed the costs…” 

And then Asami sees it clearly; her father has begun to view justice in the same way he’d approach a business venture. Maybe Asami’s the same, given how thoroughly she’d committed to the idea of rounding up equalists. She hadn’t given a second thought to complexities, or even her own misery.

“And if you have to kill people, will you?” 

“If it comes to that.” 

“Dad, the equalists’s methods are just going to lead to more motherless kids. Sound familiar?” She feels tears trace their way down her face, and she brushes them away angrily. “And what happens when all those orphans grow up? Do they start a violent revolution of their own? Where will this end, exactly?”

“You’re not an orphan,” her father says, her voice as flimsy as the silk Asami’s mother had once designed. 

“I know. And that’s why I’m telling you to escape from here before you’re caught.” 

With that, Asami turns on her heel and exits that hellish room. The non-crooked cops will find her roaming the halls soon enough, and she’ll be back in her cell. Maybe with a few extra days added to her sentence for poor behavior.

Asami never looks back.


End file.
